But infrastructure is actually made out of concrete, which can be poured almost like water into any mold you can fashion to hold it, and it then hardens into something stone-like.
But working with concrete is nothing like working with clay. It's not iterative at all. The mold has to be planned out and set up precisely ahead of time or else everything will be a mess and you are not going to be able to correct it. Working with concrete is really working with timber (or whatever material you are making the mold of)
That's interesting. What is the software equivalent of pouring something into a mold?
Test Driven Development I guess?
Oh, good one, yes, the tests are the shape and then you fill that in automatically. I never thought of it that way, this is a very interesting insight. I wonder whether the effort you have to put into the mold versus the effort that goes in the object has been quantified.